Abstract In recent decades, asset prices have outpaced consumer goods inflation and wages in many developed and some developing economies. In turn, scholars have suggested that asset ownership, especially homeownership, is increasingly important to individual life chances in these economies relative to employment, but less is known about how the political attitudes of asset owners and non-owners have changed. Using General Social Survey data spanning 1985 to 2022, I examine changes in Americans’ attitudes toward downward government redistribution and voting for Republican presidential candidates by homeownership status. I find evidence for a substantial divergence in the attitudes of homeowners and non-owners over the past several decades. This divergence is evident not only in the overall population but also among non-managerial non-professional employees and those earning less than the median income, substantiating longstanding claims that the working class is politically fragmented by homeownership. Furthermore, attitudinal differences by homeownership status exceed those between the self-employed, managerial employees, non-managerial professional employees, and non-managerial non-professional employees in the United States today.
Jake Burchard (Tue,) studied this question.